A specter is haunting Europe, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote more than a century ago—“the specter of communism.” Communism is spectral no longer. It has become a political and economic system under which one-third of the world's people live. Today, Communists and non-Communists alike would agree that the “Great October Socialist Revolution,” which took place in Russia 50 years ago, was of “enormous international significance” and that it “accelerated the march of historical events in the world.”

What has communism accomplished in half a century? Where has it fallen short of its goals? Above all, in which direction is it heading? These questions have been posed often in Soviet communism's jubilee year, and the answers have been far from uniform.

Taking stock of the past 50 years, the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party last January listed six achievements of communism: (1) The setting up of a large-scale Socialist industry with a steady rate of development; (2) the implementation of Lenin's cooperative plan in the countryside and establishment of large-scale Socialist agricultural production; (3) a rise in the living standards of the people; (4) the accomplishment of a cultural revolution; (5) the growing social, political and ideological unity of the people; (6) the birth of a man of a new world, a man with a new moral.